Mr N

When you sign up for a Hotmail account it may not set your account name to your real name, so here are a few step-by-step instructions to help you navigate the Hotmail interface and get to the sweet spot.

1. Log into Hotmail
2. Click Options (on the right), select More options
3. From the Manage your account section, click View and edit your personal information
4. Find the account you want and click Registered information
5. The first option is Name, so click Change
6. Enter First name and Last name, then click Save

That’s it, quite simple - once you know where to look!

Plesk generates web statistics using awstats. The "Select Period" drop down box is created with all the month dates in a random order which is not very helpful! It makes selecting the month you want tricky.

The following code checks which domains are using awstats and will re-jig their nav.html files to put them all in the correct order. Place the following program into your cron to run after awstats has completed.

The simplest way to find out when awstats completes, is to check the creation time of the nav.html file and add 30 minutes to be safe.

I've called mine: **plesk-awstats-nav-fixer.sh**

#!/bin/bash
#
# This code was written by BigSoft Limited.
# Please include this message when you use the code in any form.
# Code comes as is and without warrenty
#
# David Newcomb (c) BigSoft Limited 2008
#

# Get MySQL's admin password
PSA_PW=`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow`
PSA_USER=admin

# Location of webstats folders
VHOST=/var/www/vhosts
STATS=statistics/webstat

# Find enabled domain names that use awstats statistics.
# When a client is deactivated the status of a domain
# becomes non-zero, so there is no need to join on the
# client's table.

SQL="     SELECT d.name"
SQL="$SQL FROM domains d, hosting h"
SQL="$SQL WHERE d.id = h.dom_id"
SQL="$SQL AND d.status = 0"
SQL="$SQL AND h.webstat = 'awstats'"

# Run SQL
DOMAINS=`mysql --skip-column-names -u$PSA_USER -p$PSA_PW -e"$SQL" psa`

for DOMAIN in $DOMAINS
do

  AWSTATS_DIR=$VHOST/$DOMAIN/$STATS

  echo "Checking $AWSTATS_DIR"
  if [ ! -d "$AWSTATS_DIR" ]
  then
    echo "Sorry awstats folder does not exist: $AWSTATS_DIR"
    continue
  fi

  cd $AWSTATS_DIR

  grep '^<option value="' nav.html | sort -r > nav_options.html
  grep -v '<option value="' nav.html > nav_nooptions.html

  ed nav_nooptions.html << EOF
/^<\/select>
-1r nav_options.html
wq
EOF

  rm -f nav_options.html
  rm -f nav.html
  mv nav_nooptions.html nav.html

done

You have to love ed! It is (as far as I know) the only editor that is described as WYGIWYG (What You Get Is What You Get - wikipedia deleted my entry because no one else seems to have heard of this expression apart from me!).

This is the second problem with Plesk and awstats I have documented. Here's another: Plesk Awstat forgets the monthly statistics.

No blog would be complete with out an article on how to use Google search more effectively. All the instructions are on the Google site so I thought I would talk through some of the more advanced search techniques. I was recently searching for information on OpenSessionInViewInterceptor. There wasn’t much out there. I needed to narrow my search to just the Spring Reference. So here comes the first tip:

site:static.springframework.org OpenSessionInViewInterceptor

This limits all the results to entries which are at the website http://static.springframework.org/. The search was throwing back loads of links to the API documentation so, I needed to restrict the results again to the reference section:

site:static.springframework.org inurl:reference OpenSessionInViewInterceptor

This was now giving me results for all the versions. Next I needed to reduce the search down to include the version number. Google only lets you have 1 colon’ed option per type, so:

site:static.springframework.org inurl:reference inurl:2.5 OpenSessionInViewInterceptor

returns nothing! You must join them together:

site:static.springframework.org inurl:(reference and 2.5) OpenSessionInViewInterceptor

Problem: Web traffic is coming through Tomcat to one of your servlets. Your servlet accesses a couple of hibernate objects but when it tries to load a lazy proxy you get:

org.springframework.web.util.NestedServletException: Request processing failed; nested exception is org.hibernate.LazyInitializationException: failed to lazily initialize a collection of role: uk.co.bigsoft.proj.bus.Clip.aaf, no session or session was closed org.hibernate.collection.AbstractPersistentCollection.throwLazyInitializationExceptionIfNotConnected(AbstractPersistentCollection.java:372) org.hibernate.collection.AbstractPersistentCollection.readSize(AbstractPersistentCollection.java:119) org.hibernate.collection.PersistentSet.size(PersistentSet.java:162) uk.co.bigsoft.proj.web.MyController.handleRequest(MyController.java:57) org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.SimpleControllerHandlerAdapter.handle(SimpleControllerHandlerAdapter.java:48) org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:874) org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:808) org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:476) org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:431) javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:617) javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717)

We want something that can set up the transaction after calling SimpleControllerHandlerAdapter.handle and before calling our handleRequest method and then commit or rollback the session depending on whether our controller throws an exception or not. There appeared to be 2 choices to use:

• OpenSessionInViewFilter or
• OpenSessionInViewInterceptor,

but which one to use? There is quite a good article here: Spring: OpenSessionInViewInterceptor vs. OpenSessionInViewFilter but you better make sure you can speak splingo. Basically, the OpenSessionInViewInterceptor is an interceptor which can be used to wrap any kind of technology, whereas the OpenSessionInViewFilter is an Interceptor that can only be used in the web servlet environment. Therefor you can use an interceptor in all cases but you can only use a filter in the web servlet case. I found a clue in 13.4.3. Intercepting requests - the HandlerInterceptor interface of the reference manual. There is almost no reference to the OpenSessionInViewFilter, so I think this is being obsoleted where as the OpenSessionInViewInterceptor is covered in a whole section about interceptors (as a technology). Interceptors just plug into the org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping in your bean definition configuration.

<bean
 id="openSessionInViewInterceptor"
 class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.support.OpenSessionInViewInterceptor"
 >
  <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean
 id="urlMapping"
 class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping"
 >
  <property name="interceptors">
    <list>
      <ref bean="openSessionInViewInterceptor"/>
    </list>
  </property>
  <property name="mappings">
    <props>
      <prop key="/getmy.html">myController</prop>
    </props>
  </property>      
</bean>

And it all just worked. Or if you are using annotations you could just wrap handleRequest in @Transactional…! There are pros and cons to annotating the transactions and using an interceptor, and when I find out what they are I’ll update this blog!

Just so you can say that you heard it here first, I am inventing a new word splingo. It is a word made up of Spring and lingo. I have used “Spring (Framework)” as a case in point but the language can be applied as a generic term to describe any make of application framework environment e.g. JBoss, WebLogic, etc. Splingo roles off the tongue a bit better than other combinations. It is pronounced ’spl’ (like in ’spl’ice) and lingo (as in the language).

define:splingo The language used when talking about the workings of application frameworks.

In order to have a conversation about an application framework you need to understand a new set of nouns and verbs. Used together they create a descriptive language that needs to be learnt. New people entering the application framework world struggle to integrate and find answers to questions until they have learnt how to speak (or write) splingo. Nouns include (but are not limited to) lazy, interceptor, bean, ejb, proxy, filter, session, transaction, manager. You can pick up parts of the language but until you can speak all of it you will not have an advanced enough understanding of all the technologies to the point that you can understand new concepts. It typically takes about 6 months of studying to get a comprehensive grasp of the language and grammar (or syntax).